Grateful for my mat

byAlexonFebruary 16, 2016

In the fall of 2014 I visited & practiced in a lovely studio in Berea, Ohio called The Yoga Space. Since then I’ve been receiving their thoughtful newsletters. There’s always a nugget of wisdom in there that inspires and connects me to the depth of yoga. So it is with the description of yoga on their website:

“Many people think that yoga is just stretching. But while stretching is certainly involved, yoga is really about creating balance in the body through developing both strength and flexibility.
The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word “Yuj” meaning to yoke, join or unite. In yoga, we are integrating all aspects of the individual – body with mind and mind with soul – to achieve a happy, balanced and useful life, and spiritually, uniting the individual with their unique and true self. So although the yoga poses themselves do not change, over time your relationship to them will.”

What touched me again today is reading “how the poses themselves do not change, over time your relationship to them will.”

Any given pose can present you with a number of challenges and one day they feel great and the next day it’s a hot mess. So it is in life.

Shit still hits the fan, but because of my years of practice on the mat, I’m better able to navigate the sudden storms and violently high waves that threaten to throw me off my path and pull me under. I’ve ‘been there’, tumbling in the storm and under water barely able to breathe and I’m not going back.

My relationship to these storms have changed.

I’m deliberately pausing, sensing, feeling.. what’s really going on here? Instead of reacting I’m choosing my actions with more poise and wisdom and year by passing year I get better at calibrating & navigating situations with love in mind.